The Washington Post is reporting today that just weeks before the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump’s lawyer nearly screwed the pooch on paying a porn star to stay silent about her alleged affair with then-candidate Trump.
Having missed a critical deadline for paying off Stormy Daniels, she was threatening to go public about the affair.
In an Oct. 17 email, an attorney for Daniels — a porn star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — threatened to cancel the nondisclosure agreement by the end of the day.
That very morning, Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, had created a limited liability company, public records show, that ultimately would serve as a vehicle for Daniels’s payoff. But the money had not arrived. A second email to Cohen, a short time after the first, said Daniels was calling the deal off.
“Please be advised that my client deems her settlement agreement canceled and void,” Daniels’s lawyer, Keith Davidson, wrote in the email, which The Washington Post obtained.
Ten days later, the $130,000 payment arrived, according to another email reviewed by The Post. Daniels’s story about her sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier would remain under wraps long past Election Day.
The payment to Daniels was made just 12 days before the election.
Progressive research group American Bridge and Common Cause, a government watchdog group, have both filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission arguing the payment was meant to influence the Nov. 8 election and therefore violated campaign finance law.
During a meeting with Democratic and Republican lawmakers, Donald Trump surprised many when he suggested taking people’s guns away – whether or not it was legal.
For years, the National Rifle Association has been warning gun-loving Americans of a president who will take away their firearms, no matter what the Second Amendment says.
On Wednesday, that conservative nightmare became a reality when the current Republican U.S. president, Donald Trump, proposed taking away people’s guns, even without the legal right to do so.
“Take the guns first. Go through due process second,” Trump said at a meeting with Democratic and Republican lawmakers at the White House. “I like taking the guns early.”
Trump said law enforcement officers should specifically have taken the firearms possessed by Nikolas Cruz, the suspected gunman in the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
“I think they should have taken them away, whether they had the right or not,” he said.
Imagine if President Obama had said out loud, “Take the guns.”
So, umm, Trumpers – how do you feel about the Trumpeter wanting to “take guns first; do due diligence second?”
President Trump proposes taking guns away from owners before going to court.
“By the time you go to court, it takes so long to go to court to get the due process procedures, I like taking the guns early.” pic.twitter.com/ZtNNwyzTzA
Trump surprisingly shamed lawmakers on the age of buying an assault weapon at 18 but not having legal rights to a hand gun until 21 years-old.
“You don’t address it… you know why? Because you’re afraid of the NRA, right?” Trump said today.
Pres. Trump asks lawmakers why they haven’t addressed increasing the minimum age for purchasing firearms in their proposed legislation: “You don’t address it… you know why? Because you’re afraid of the NRA, right?” https://t.co/9eiKYloz2Ipic.twitter.com/j00oaGawUC
Trump is openly advocating taking peoples’ guns without due process, in case you wanted to tell your paranoid relatives and friends they’ve been afraid of the wrong people.
NRA’s Dana Loesch promptly stopped livetweeting the Trump/Congress meeting after Trump said “I like taking the guns early. Take the guns first, go through due process second.”
The NRA would’ve issued a drone strike on the White House had Obama said that. pic.twitter.com/xsom68Xig0
Earlier today, Donald Trump issued a twitter rant at his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions after Sessions’ announcement that he will ask the inspector general of the Department of Justice to look into allegations of government surveillance abuse.
Trump went ballistic tweeting:
Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!
Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!
After months of being a public punching bag for Trump, Sessions has issued a rare public response to the attack this morning which called him “disgraceful” for his handling of the FISA warrants issue.
Via press release from the Department Of Justice:
“We have initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this Department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary. As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution.” – Jeff Sessions.
In spite of Trump’s tirade, Congressional Republicans stood by the decision and Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina and current chairman of the House Oversight Committee, lauded Horowitz on Wednesday saying he has been “fair, fact centric, and appropriately confidential with his work.”
“I have complete confidence in him and hope he is given the time, the resources and the independence to complete his work,” Mr. Gowdy said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also signaled his support for Mr. Horowitz.
More from the Twitterverse (and these are serious-minded people, folks):
Trump’s tweet attacking Sessions also unfairly smeared DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, a serious and respected investigator. Horowitz is not Sessions’ “employee” but one would expect the AG to object when a disrespectful politician hurls an unjustified attack at DOJ’s IG. https://t.co/kBWsYfoIDE
He wants political appointees to prosecute FBI officials for lawfully getting FISA surveillance warrants to watch persons who collaborated with Russian agents. He does not trust an independent Inspector General, but wants political hacks to go after his own FBI. Abuse of power. https://t.co/mLlgPvSGEk
This is Trump at his worst. He is asking that the DOJ investigate itself. The inspector general, who has his own staff of lawyers and investigators, at least enjoys a measure of independence from the department. Trump still wants the AG to act his political goalie. https://t.co/KhAZ4VDmIz
.@KarlRove on Trump tweet about AG Sessions: “If you want to be successful as president, you got to step back, be the adult, absorb some of these little blows and keep focus on the big things. And the big thing is not to attack the Inspector General as quote ‘an Obama-guy.'” pic.twitter.com/i5v8qumTaw
Speaking to the nation’s governors today about the deputy sheriff who failed to intervene during the gun massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School, Donald Trump said, “I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon.”
WATCH: “I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon,” President Trump asserts while discussing Florida school mass shooting response. https://t.co/KvQU9lpFGrpic.twitter.com/keCu0FrF92
This would be the same Donald Trump who dodged the Vietnam draft five times claiming he had “bone spurs” in one of his feet (he can’t seem to remember which foot).
“I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon,” Trump said, according to The Associated Press. I believe you, Captain Bone Spurs & I really believe that due to an unexpected write-in vote, I’ll win an Oscar this Sunday. #ItsFunToPretend
Rick Gates, a top level adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, is expected to plead guilty to charges related to participating in financial conspiracy along with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Gates is also expected to admit to lying to investigators regarding a 2013 Washington meeting Manafort took part in with a member of Congress and a lobbyist.
The adviser, Rick Gates, is a longtime political consultant who once served as Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman. The plea deal could be a significant development in the investigation — a sign that Mr. Gates plans to offer incriminating information against his longtime associate and the former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, or other members of the Trump campaign in exchange for a lighter punishment.
The deal comes as the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has been raising pressure on Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort with dozens of new charges of money laundering and bank fraud that were unsealed on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. Mr. Mueller first indicted both men in October, and both pleaded not guilty.
Gates was Donald Trump’s Deputy Campaign Chair, and stayed with the campaign and transition team even after Manafort was booted from the campaign.
Gates becomes the 5th person who has plead guilty in the Mueller probe:
• Rick Gates • Michael Flynn • George Papadopoulos • Richard Pinedo • Alex Van Der Zwann
Gates is now the 3rd member of the Trump campaign who has plead guilty.
Additionally, there have been 14 indictments to come out of the investigation looking into Russian disruption of the 2016 presidential election.
For a “witch hunt” or “hoax,” that’s a LOT of guilty pleas and indictments, don’t you think?
Watch NBC News‘ Pete Williams explain today’s developments below.
BREAKING: Rick Gates will plead guilty to “lying to federal agents” and a “general conspiracy charge” during a plea hearing today. He now faces a maximum of 5 years in prison, NBC Justice Correspondent @PeteWilliamsNBC reports. #TrumpColluded#TrumpRussiapic.twitter.com/GZvuYkESLv
Rick Gates, the Deputy Campaign Chairman for the President of the United States, just pled DOWN to Conspiracy Against the United States. Let that sink in for a minute. Trump had at least one actual traitor to our country running his affairs.
The nation’s health department is taking steps to dismantle LGBT health initiatives, as political appointees have halted or rolled back regulations intended to protect LGBT workers and patients, removed LGBT-friendly language from documents and reassigned the senior adviser dedicated to LGBT health.
The sharp reversal from Obama-era policies carries implications for a population that’s been historically vulnerable to discrimination in health care settings, say LGBT health advocates. A Health Affairs study last year found that many LGBT individuals have less access to care than heterosexuals; in a Harvard-Robert Wood Johnson-NPR survey one in six LGBT individuals reported experiencing discrimination from doctors or at a clinic.
The Trump administration soon after taking office also moved to change the agency’s LGBT-related health data collection, a window into health status and discrimination. Last month it established a new religious liberty division to defend health workers who have religious objections to treating LGBT patients.
The changes at the Department of Health and Human Services represent “rapid destruction of so much of the progress on LGBT health,” said Kellan Baker, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health who worked with HHS on LGBT issues for nearly a decade. “It’s only a matter of time before all the gains made under the Obama administration are reversed under the Trump administration, for purposes that have nothing to do with public health and have everything to do with politics.”
Politico breaks down all the various steps the Trump administration is against LGBTs.
President Trump says he’s signed a memorandum directing Attorney General Sessions to propose regulations to ban “all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns.”
President Trump ordered the Justice Department on Tuesday to propose regulations to ban so-called bump stocks, which can convert a semiautomatic gun into an automatic weapon like the one used last year in the massacre of concertgoers in Las Vegas.
Speaking at the White House days after a mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 14 students and three teachers, Mr. Trump said that he had directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to develop the regulations, saying that the step would help prevent future mass shootings.
The White House had said last year that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was performing a review of whether it could regulate bump stocks after the shooting in Las Vegas, which killed dozens of people. Even as Mr. Trump was speaking on Tuesday, a bureau official told a reporter that the review was continuing.
But the president said that he had signed a memorandum on Tuesday effectively short-circuiting that review.
Watch Trump’s comments below.
BREAKING: President Trump says he’s directed Attorney General Sessions to propose regulations to ban “all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns.” https://t.co/kFKRt6pMzEpic.twitter.com/TXr3m18P2J
